


Work Experience

by Lleu, Tequila_Mockingbird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Awkward Crush, Middle School, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2102082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleu/pseuds/Lleu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tequila_Mockingbird/pseuds/Tequila_Mockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Derek’s mother told him that finding a part time job before college would be good for him, she probably hadn’t meant this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work Experience

**Author's Note:**

> Mabel is at least 80, but there was no particular place to mention that anywhere in the story, so we didn’t. That the death metal is orchestral is a concession to her boss’s delicate sensibilities.

When Derek’s mother told him that finding a part time job before college would be good for him, she probably hadn’t meant this. She had meant, maybe, that he would learn responsibility, that he would save up a little money, that he would gain valuable work experience.

Nothing is valuable about this experience.

“Stiles, your father, the _Sheriff_ , has written a note that says you’re not allowed any kind of caffeinated beverage. It’s right here. On the counter. Just like it has been for the past three months.”

“There’s caffeine in hot chocolate—you let me order that!”

“That’s not the point. The point is no coffee.”

“What about a mochafrappuchinolatte with foam?”

“Still coffee. Also, we don’t serve that. Whatever that is.”

Stiles pouts and tries to look cute. Perhaps it would work, if Derek was also… you know. Eleven. Or liked children at all.

“No coffee for eleven year olds.”

“Excuse you, I will be turning fourteen in like, seven and a half months!”

“No. Coffee.” He would try growling, but he has the uncomfortable feeling that it wouldn’t work.

“Lydia gets coffee!”

“Because _her_ father hasn’t written any notes telling me she’s not allowed to have it.” Derek has never even met Lydia’s father. The Sheriff, on the other hand, comes by every morning for a Danish and a small cup—milk, no sugar. And every morning, he taps the laminated note by the cashier’s register meaningfully while he’s handing over $4.23 (exact change, every time) and—Derek swears, even if Laura doesn’t believe it—gestures meaningfully to his service pistol.

The bell over the door rings, and Derek keeps his face neutral only with great effort. It’s the rest of the middle-school crowd; Stiles must have run to get here first.

“Look, either order something I’m allowed to serve you, or get out of the way so your _friends_ can order.”

Stiles scowls up at him. Shockingly, it’s no more effective than his pout. “Small hot chocolate. Extra whipped—”

“We’re out of whipped cream.” They’re not out of whipped cream. But after the third broken plate incident, his boss informed him that the Stilinski kid got less than 100 grams of sugar every two hours. Small hot chocolate (regular whipped cream) had 53, and since Stiles is about—

“and a blueberry muffin.”

—to order a blueberry muffin, that would bring it up to 98 grams.

Mabel pours chocolate syrup into a cup, and Derek reaches into the glass display case and hauls out a blueberry muffin, which he dumps onto a plate and shoves at Stiles.

“That’ll be $4.21.”

Stiles pushes a five across the counter and winks broadly. “Keep the change.”

This is the part Derek hates. He could put up with the weird hours, the unflattering apron, the mild scalding from when he inevitably tries to grab the milk too quickly, the way his hair always smells like coffee. Beacon Hills isn’t a big town, and a job that pays $11.35 an hour is nothing to sneeze at. But the customers. Or rather, some of the customers.

Lydia makes it to the counter first. “Excuse me, Bilinski.”

“It’s _Sti_ -linski, Lydia, we’ve been in the same class since kindergarten.”

She glares at the kid in a way that terrifies Derek a little, before turning to him and smiling sweetly, which is honestly… equally terrifying. “Good afternoon, Derek.”

“Hi, Lydia.”

“I’d like a large _café au lait_ , please.”

Derek sighs. “Do you mean a latte?” They go through this every day.

“Oh, I’m sorry, of course… I forgot.” She tosses her hair, sending a cloud of watermelon scent wafting toward his face. She smells like a Jolly Rancher gone horribly, horribly wrong. “After spending so much time in _la belle France_ , I keep forgetting.”

Derek refrains from rolling his eyes and rings up the latte.

“It was one week, Lydia. In second grade.”

“Shut up, Jackson.”

“That’ll be—“

She flicks a glossy black credit card across the counter. “Charge it, Derek.”

Stifling another sigh, he does. He’d never met Lydia’s mother, either, but he could have gone on any number of spending sprees with the woman’s credit card.

Jackson leans over the counter, probably trying for a roguish grin. He looks a little like there’s something in his eye. “Hey, Derek.”

“Hello, Jackson.”

“An Irish coffee. Large.” Jackson probably thinks his voice is dripping with innuendo, but it breaks. Twice.

“One large coffee with mint syrup coming up.”

At this point, Jackson doesn’t even bother to argue. The ID Derek had confiscated seven weeks earlier was impressively realistic looking, if Derek hadn’t known that Jackson was in seventh grade with Cora and the rest of the rabble.

“That’s $2.83.”

Danny offers Derek a sympathetic smile over Jackson’s head. Derek would be insulted, if it wasn’t so nice.

“Small tea, honey and lemon.”

“Coming right up.” Mabel is moving like a well-oiled machine—she’s already handed out Stiles’s small hot chocolate and Lydia’s latte and is pouring the artificially green syrup into Jackson’s cup.

“$1.22.” Derek has never told Danny that a small tea with honey and lemon costs $1.68, and he never will. The kid deserves something for being Jackson’s best friend.

Scott wobbles up to the counter, staggering under the weight of his bag, and takes a puff from his inhaler before ordering. “Small hot chocolate, no whipped cream, and two chocolate chip cookies.”

“Are you sure you’ll want two?”

“Yep!” Scott pushes over the $3.82 entirely in small change. Derek passes over the cookies.

Since the post-middle-school rush is now done with, Derek gets to making Scott’s hot chocolate himself, leaving Mabel to pass Danny the lemon and honey over the counter.

He gets almost fifteen minutes of blissful non-interaction, which might be a new record. Allison isn’t due until 4:38, after Archery Club lets out, and if you’d told Derek when he took this job that he’d end up with the schedules of half-a-dozen obnoxious thirteen-year-olds memorized, he would have chosen to file things for $6.79 an hour at his mom’s office instead.

Scott wanders over, clutching an algebra textbook and a plate with a single, sad cookie on it. “Hey Derek?”

“What.”

“Uh, Derek. You want my extra cookie?” The kid is bright red.

“No.” It would be unprofessional, even if he wanted the cookie. And he doesn’t want to encourage this kind of behavior.

“Uh. Okay. Also, I have a question about my math homework, and I figured since you’re heading to Reed in the fall you must be pretty smart, so…”

“No.” Derek is going to be an English major. He’s not even sure he remembers Algebra I. Like many things from middle school, it’s a vaguely unpleasant blur.

Scott slouches back to his seat. Derek wipes the counter down.

The shop is pretty quiet on a Thursday afternoon—it’s Mabel’s day to choose the music, which means they’re all listening to orchestral arrangements of Death Metal intermingled with early 2000s Justin Timberlake. Derek has actually caught himself humming “Losing My Way” a few times.

It’s past five by the time Allison runs in, panting, to explain loudly that archery ran late. Derek would tell her to be quiet, but the only customers in the shop are her friends and Old Man Joseph, who’s mostly deaf and completely absorbed in his cheesecake, anyway. She orders a mocha and lemon poppy seed muffin, hands over her $4.57, and sits down next to Lydia to start working on the same algebra homework that apparently stumped Scott. Derek knows better than to recommend that they all study together, at this point.

By the time he and Mabel have closed at seven—shooing out six middle-schoolers to do it amid cries of protest (and one of “fascism!”)—Derek’s feet hurt and he has mild burns all over his chest from Stiles’s third hot chocolate, which he spilled after tripping into Derek while Derek was wiping down tables. Jackson might have helped him trip. Derek had had to retreat to the break room to keep Lydia from solicitously removing his apron and shirt to wipe down his chest with the fistful of napkins she just happened to have in her hands.

His mother hears the door slam and wanders into the hall, still holding an essay, red ink all over her fingers and a pen stuck behind her ear. “Bad day at work, sweetie?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Laura, leaning over the bannister from the second floor, says, “Derek has a _fan club_.”

Derek’s shoe narrowly misses her face.

“I don’t know how you do it all day, Mom. Middle school kids should be shot.”

She pats him gently on the shoulder, smearing red ink on his sleeve. “You’ll understand when you’re old enough to drink, dear.”

**Author's Note:**

> When Tequila was twelve, she developed a burning passion for the poor college student manning the counter of the nearest Caffe Nero. This is dedicated to him. Call me.
> 
> This Derek is everything Lleu aspires to be, sort of. This story had many more ellipses before he deleted them. This is an AU where Kokutetsu never changed its name to JR.
> 
> There’s probably more of this (Mabel and Peter’s sordid affair, the middle school dance, Cora’s overwhelming scorn, 8th grade graduation) but we ran out of steam. We’d say we’re sorry, but we’re not.


End file.
